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The Real and the Fictive in Philip K. Dick's Novels

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The Real and the Fictive in Philip K. Dick's Novels The Real and the Fictive in Philip K. Dick's Novels Vinski, Petra Master's thesis / Diplomski rad 2020 Degree Grantor / Ustanova koja je dodijelila akademski / stručni stupanj: University of Rijeka, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences / Sveučilište u Rijeci, Filozofski fakultet Permanent link / Trajna poveznica: https://urn.nsk.hr/urn:nbn:hr:186:727478 Rights / Prava: In copyright Download date / Datum preuzimanja: 2021-09-25 Repository / Repozitorij: Repository of the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences - FHSSRI Repository UNIVERSITY OF RIJEKA FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Petra Vinski The Real and The Fictive in Philip K. Dick’s Novels Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the M.A. in English Language and Literature at the University of Rijeka Supervisor: Dr.sc. Lovorka Gruić-Grmuša Rijeka, September 2020 2 Table of contents 1. Introduction 3 2. Great minds think alike - Baudrillard and Dick 4 3. What is reality? 6 4.1. Ubik 9 4.2 Ontological detectives in search for their reality 10 5.1. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch 25 5.2. The reality-bending drugs 27 5.3 Can-D, the (il)legal religion of colonies 30 5.4. Chew-Z, the alien trap 36 6. What constitutes an authentic human being? 44 7.1. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 46 7.2. How to be human in a world of human-like androids? 48 7.3. Real and ‘fake’ humans in Ubik and Three Stigmata 64 8. Conclusion 68 9. Bibliography 70 3 1. Introduction Nowadays, science fiction is a very popular genre, offering readers a perspective of what our world and humanity might become, and which technologies might be available in future. Often those societies are rather dystopian, with more or less obvious influence from the time they were written in. Dunst and Schlensag wrote that ‘’science fiction forms a ‘third reality’ that brings together materiality and metaphors, agency and ideas in a way that disrupts our cherished distinction of object and subject, real and imaginary’’ (8). Precisely that notion of the third reality where distinction between real and imaginary is disrupted is one of the strongest themes in the fiction of Philip K. Dick, one of the most important science fiction writers of the 20th century. In his essay How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later?, Dick wrote that the two topics which fascinate him the most are “What is reality?” and “What constitutes the authentic human being’’? (Dick in Sutin 182). He dealt with those questions by creating worlds in which reality seems to slowly fade and become replaced by another and by creating memorable characters whose humanity is questionable. Those two questions are present throughout his fiction, but they are especially relevant in his three novels: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Ubik and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Reality is a major theme in both Ubik and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, where the characters and the reader seem to struggle with discerning the reality from a simulated one. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? he ‘’juxtaposes human with artificial life forms’’ (Hayles, ‘’Schizoid’’ 442) – humans and androids, but also real animals and electric animals. In that novel, androids seem to possess more human virtues than actual humans, making the readers struggle with declaring what constitutes an authentic human being. Apart from novels and short stories, Dick wrote many essays in which he shared his thoughts on the society, literature and science fiction, future, and reality, which are evident in 4 his novels as well. In the same essay Dick also wrote: ‘’I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes that do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos’’ (Dick in Sutin 184). Combination of his love for chaos along with the never-ending search for the answer about what is real and human and what is not resulted in stories where the real and the fictive are intertwined. Thus, in this paper, the focus is on three novels Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and the relationship between the real and the fictive, which is intricate and often indistinguishable. When it comes to the notion of reality, French sociologist Jean Baudrillard’s contribution is immense. Baudrillard wrote that the postmodern society has entered ‘’hyperreality - a world without a real origin’’ (Lane 86) and argued that there is no difference between the real (fact) and the imaginary (fiction). Thus, Baudrillard’s ideas, from his book Simulation and Simulacra, correlate with Dick’s fiction in a sense that both write about the loss of the real, which creates an unstable relationship between the real and the fictive. 2. Great minds think alike - Baudrillard and Dick Baudrillard’s concepts of simulation, simulacra and hyperreality, along with his critique of the postmodern society and media made him one of the ‘’authorities’’ of postmodernism when it comes to reality. Leitch even calls him ‘’a prophet crying out in the wilderness of postmodernity’’ (1729). In Simulation and Simulacra, Baudrillard explained why he believes that the postmodern society has lost a contact with the real, claiming that ‘’we live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning’’ (55) and also that ‘’the great event of this period, the great trauma, is this decline of strong referentials, these death pangs of the real and of the rational that open onto an age of simulation’’ (31). According to 5 him, the society became too reliant on models, which led to precession of simulacra, meaning that those models precede and determine the real and reality can only imitate the mode, along with the problem that there is no real anymore. In his words: ‘’it is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real … Never again will the real have the chance to produce itself - such is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection, that no longer even gives the event of death a chance. A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and for the simulated generation of differences” (Baudrillard 4). Leitch further explained Baudrillard’s ideas by writing that ‘’simulacrum seems to have referents (real phenomena they refer to), but they are merely pretend representations that mark the absence, not the existence, of the objects they purport to represent” (1730). Moreover, he wrote about the three orders of simulacra – the first one corresponds to the pre-modern period, where the image was simply a counterfeit of reality and an illusion, he called it natural. In the second order, the productive order, industrial revolution is crucial, since the line between the sign and the image began to blur due to the mass production. That is the order of copies. While the second order still makes it possible to discern between what is real and what not, that becomes nearly impossible in the third order, which is the postmodern period or the simulation, which controls reality. Now the representation determines the real and there is a loss instead of the reality being determined by the model, it is the other way around, which means that the contact with the reality is lost. Thus, postmodern society has entered the state of hyperreality – ‘’a world without a real origin’’ (Lane 86). He wrote about the four phases of the image in simulacra. In the first phase, image reflects a profound reality, in the second, it masks reality, while in third it masks the absence of reality. Finally, in the fourth phase, it has ‘’no relation to any reality whatsoever, it is its own pure simulacrum’’ (Baudrillard 6). Ultimately, 6 ‘’simulation is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal’’ (Baudrillard 3). Apart from losing the sense of the real, Baudrillard believed that the object has more importance than the subject: ‘’neofiguration is an invocation of resemblance, but at the same time the flagrant proof of the disappearance of objects in their very representation: hyperreal. Therein objects shine in a sort of hyperresemblance (like history in contemporary cinema) that makes it so that fundamentally they no longer resemble anything, except the empty figure of resemblance, the empty form of representation. It is a question of life or death: these objects are no longer either living or deadly’’ (Baudrillard 32). This can be found with Dick’s characters and certain items in the novels. 3. What is reality? ‘’It was always my hope, in writing novels and stories which asked the question “What is reality?”, to someday get an answer. This was the hope of most of my readers, too. Years passed. I wrote over thirty novels and over a hundred stories, and still I could not figure out what was real’’ (Dick in Sutin 183). Dick’s constant search for that answer is perhaps the reason why there is such a strong focus on reality in his fiction. Moreover, he experienced uncanny visions which he interpreted as revelations about the world around him. He spent the rest of his life trying to make sense of that event so one could argue that by writing about uncertain realities, he wanted to explore and give sense to the unusual events in his life.
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